What an awful thing to have happen - credit to you for maintaining a sense of humor thou I can imagine you were gritting your teeth during the entire discussison with the hotel manager. Must agree with Inspector Clue-Sol, an inside job it definately was. Hope everything gets sorted out for you and the rest of your group ...

Anchovy Front, you are truly a leader in all senses. I hope you get a positive response for all your troubles. Certainly the hotel should compensate you in many ways. Once, at a convention in D.C., my friend's purse was stolen right from a meeting room. Turns out it was lifted by the 'security' person (aka 'rent a copy'). He confessed, and they had him on video anyway. The hotel was soooooo apologetic. They were going to replace my friend's money even if the young man didn't cough it up. Let us know how this all turns out. Can you at least tell us if the hotel is part of a chain, and if it is a Spanish chain or international? I don't see anything wrong with telling a story that is true about a place and saying you suspect an inside job.... hardly libel.

Thanks Puna! You were right about the gritted teeth bit!

To avoid any worried speculation about the hotel in question, here's another clue which should reassure most people who have booked up for a future visit! The name is Hotel something, the something being the name of a European city, not connected with Spain!

No prizes for guessing and no answers given either!!

AF

You continue to amaze me with your positive attitude. I, for one, would find it hard to emulate you in a similar situation.

I take your statement of not wanting to be an alarmist at face value, particularlily in light of your reaction to the incident. However, I am alarmed and am wondering at the wisdom of our forthcoming trip (we leave for Madrid in 20 days).

Although your loss was not insubstantial (65.000 pts. = approx. US$370.00 at current rates), it’s the hassle of replacing all the documents that is so troublesome and time consuming. Now I don’t want to be alarmist and I don’t know the value of documents on the secondary market, but is identity theft a problem in Espana as it is purported to be in the US?

Yes, I’m sure your discretion in the lobby pleased the hotel management and you are the best judge as to how to handle that aspect of the incident. However, had I been a guest at the hotel at the same time as you, I would have liked to know what had happened!

The manager may very well have been genuinely shocked. Would that have also been the case if he saw someone walking past the front desk with the safe under his arm?

I don’t know what the laws on libel are there and though the laws in the US vary from state to state, truth is an affirmative defense against a claim of libel (just another hassle to deal with). Again, your discretion may have served you well. Just a side comment, the truth of the matter asserted is NOT (or wasn’t) a defense against libel in the UK.

Your perception as to why you were targeted seems valid to me and goes to buttress your initial conclusion of an inside job.

I applaud your resistance to inflate your loss. I feel like Diogenes and can finally put this darn light down!

I really don’t want to start a discussion about the cause/effect relationship of socio-economic factors on crime but can you tell what the current unemployment rate is in Espana? Madrid?

I’ll e-mail you when we get to the Costa del Sol. Perhaps we can meet for a drink.

Best to you.

Inspector Clou-SOL (Ret.)
French Sùreté

Anchovy:
I'm not a lawyer, but conventional wisdom holds that your statements are not libelous if you are telling the truth. If true that your stuff was stolen in a particular hotel, why would it be libelous for you to say so? Don't newspapers normally report such crimes, complete with names, places and dates? And hasn't the management already conceded the truth of the event by refunding some of your money?
Cantabene

I take your point re libel, Cantabene. But I'll hold off naming it if you don't mind, as I haven't been paid out by their insurance company yet and until I do.......! You never know who's looking at this! I remember mentioning Restaurante El Churrasco when we were going to Cordoba and the owner himself pops up to put me right about whether we having hedgehogs or sea urchins!!

The manager only actually refunded me the 600 Pts rental fee and 2.000 Pts deposit for the safe, although it wouldn't have surprised me if he'd deducted a fraction of the first day's hire, because it wasn't stolen until after we'd gone out for the night!!

Anyway, I am a bit anxious about causing people to worry about their holidays in Spain. (Sol, see my e-mail!) It was the same on the board after that long thread about different people's bad experiences. In my opinion, if you are a victim, you are very unlucky and unfortunate. During my weekend, I saw THOUSANDS of tourists and just a handful only will have had a bad experience.

It is a fact of life that some crime does occur throughout each and every city in the world. Prevention is not necessarily a cure, but certainly being prepared for the "just in case" scenario will save people a lot of upset and more importantly time, which on any holiday is usually at a premium. We want to enjoy the trip, not make endless calls trying to find out credit card numbers, who to contact if the passport is lost, not knowing which train ticket serial numbers and seats they were etc. That is what I am trying to get across to everybody. Act like a Boy Scout - BE PREPARED.

I assume everybody has travel insurance - in my case it is the hotel's policy which will pay out. Stuff can be replaced, but time can't. Of course I was annoyed (to put it mildly!) but ranting and raving in my room for a few minutes, after discovering it had happened wasn't going to get the items back, although it did make me feel better!! (I have to say that it was quite comical! We were both nursing bad heads after waking up and when my wife looked in the wardrobe, she stood there for a few seconds before asking me where the safe was. I looked at her as if she was still a bit merry from the vino before staring at four holes where screws had previously been and then springing naked out of the bed shaking my fists at the walls and ceiling! If anyone has ever seen John Cleese in Fawlty Towers......!!)

So get on with it, put it to the back of your mind, get your replacement money transferred to you, organise your tickets, then get on with having a good time. Plenty of time to think about it later, but don't let the b***ers ruin your fun. Don't let them have that satisfaction. It won't put me off......I CAN'T WAIT TO GET BACK TO MADRID!!

Yikes! What a story. Very glad, though, that you were not robbed of the irreplaceables--your vacation and memories.

Your points about having all credit card, passport, airline ticket, etc numbers written down is a critical one for anyone traveling anywhere. But this works only if your list itself is not among what is stolen. I have a little trick as a hedge against that, for whatever it's worth. I email vital information to myself at my YAHOO! address (any address that allows you remote access will do). It's also not a bad idea to leave all that information with someone back home.

What does everyone think of placing one of those incredibly loud motion-sensitive alarms inside the safe as an additional precaution?

I just got home from Madrid last night, and came online to tell everyone how safe I felt. And then,, I read this horrible post! What an awful experience! We had a safe in our hotel, but it was permently attached to the room, guess it could have been ripped out if someone wanted to, but if you don't want to carry your valuables with you all day, what other choice do you have? Anyway, while I was there with my sister, I never felt like we were in danger. We walked the streets at all hours of the night, and just enjoyed the many people. The feeling of tranquility was overwhelming, although we still were cautious and only carried a minimum of money (the rest was in the hotel SAFE!) lucky us, that it wasn't stolen! The taxi drivers were always friendly to us, and nobody tried to rip us off (which was a relief). I'd printed the official taxi schedule from these postings so i knew what the approximate fares should have been.I'm going back in 5 weeks and can't wait. I miss Spain already!

Hi SandyS. I'm glad you had a great time. So did we and can't wait for our next trip to Madrid. You are so right about the atmosphere on the streets. We didn't find it threatening - more fun and exhilarating.

If a safe is there, you have to take advantage of it, don't you? I'm sure our experience is pretty much a one off and if I stayed at a hotel tomorrow with a safe I'd do the same thing again, except I'd have my list of numbers all ready in my pocket, JUST IN CASE! I would imagine the insurance cover the hotels have is pretty standard, in this case, they cover up to 300.000 Pts (although I'm pretty sure that a nicely worded letter from your lawyer would make the hotel pay up for anything above this amount!). So if anything does happen, at least you know it's not the end of the world and you will get it back.

A good idea, Aphra, the e-mail to yourself. It would make a good back up, although a good old fashioned list (NOT in the safe or in your wallet or bag!) would be my first method, as time is most important in the case of credit cards going missing. Don't know about the alarm, though - I'd probably get thrown out of the hotel for annoying everyone each time I forgot it was there!

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but just to finish this one off I thought I would let you know that nearly five months to the day, I have just been paid out for the losses we incurred. Some (most??) things simply do not happen as quickly as we would all hope in Spain and this has been one of them!

It has been one hell of a struggle to get my money and to give you one example of how pig-headed and stubborn this insurance company has been, how about this..... They were not happy or willing to pay out for the replacement train tickets to get us back from Madrid to Malaga because the credit card slip that was used as the receipt for the new tickets was in the name of my friend, who had kindly paid for them with his card and we reimbursed him once we got back home! They couldn't seem to realise that we couldn't use our cards as they had been stolen!

Anyway, at the end of the day, after a lot of shouting, threatening, ranting and raving in the hotel lobby this weekend the manager gave me the cash, which I accepted, even though it wasn't quite what I was claiming for. The next stage would have had to have been a denuncia against the hotel, who would have denounced the insurance company and it would have dragged on forever!

After speaking to the manager of the hotel for a while, it became obvious that he had passed on all the correspondence I'd sent him to the insurers, who were the real villains in this. In fact, out of a total of 140.000 Ptas of cash and stuff we lost, the insurers would pay the hotel no more than 100.000 Ptas, which reduced to 50.000 Ptas after the excess, (or franquicia in Spanish, or deductible (?) in American - sorry, Miss Madrid - I'm only kidding ). This reduced by a further 25.000 Ptas for "depreciation" (car keys, house keys, spectacles??), so out of the 120.000 Ptas I accepted, the hotel actually paid 95.000 Ptas and the hotel's insurers only paid out 25.000 Ptas. The manager told me they were changing insurers at the expiry of the present policy and I only just managed to stop myself from selling him a new policy

So a line is drawn under a bizarre affair, although it wasn't as bizarre as some of the sights witnessed in a thoroughly enjoyable Gay Pride parade on Saturday....